Alchemy and Algebra

Chapter 20

"I know I promised you something more romantic than this, but do you have any tweezers?" she asked once she was settled at his kitchen table.

"Sure. Let's go in the bathroom and get you fixed up. I want to make sure you're all patched up from your last sex injury before you get any new ones."

Kennedy swooned inside at that comment, but got up and followed Charlie to the bathroom. Bottles rattled in the medicine cabinet as he searched for supplies, then he closed it with his elbow, carrying tweezers, a bandage, and a bottle of what looked like water.

"Would you like me to do the honors?" he asked.

With a relieved sigh, Kennedy accepted. She was perfectly capable of removing a sliver, but that didn't stop her from being squeamish about it.

She sat on the edge of the tub and offered Charlie her foot. He rested it in his palm, then lifted it, trying to point her heel at the single light on the ceiling.

Kennedy squawked. "I hate to break it to you, but I'm not that flexible. Maybe like this?"

She rested her foot on her knee and turned her heel to the ceiling. "How's that?"

"Perfect." Charlie crouched down and bent over her foot, which fell into shadow from his head. "Not perfect. Maybe if you sit on the other end of the tub?"

Kennedy slid as far as she could go along the smooth white plastic of the tub's edge. "Is this better?"

Charlie knelt on the bathroom floor, angling this way and that, finally settling on sitting cross-legged in front of Kennedy. He inspected her foot and wielded the tweezers above her like he was preparing to slay a dragon.

"Have you ever done this before? You know the sliver's not going to jump up and run away, right?"

His mouth stayed relaxed but his eyes laughed at her. "Nervous?"

"Of course not! Be as gentle as you can though, okay?"

"Relax, princess. You'll be fine."

Charlie tilted Kennedy's foot into the light, then approached the sliver with the tweezers. The cold metal made contact with her skin and she shrieked.

"Maybe I should just to this," she said.

"Let me get this straight. You let me touch you very intimately just a few minutes ago, but you don't trust me with your foot?"

"Okay, okay, okay. Maybe I just need to not look."

Kennedy closed her eyes, scrunched her entire face, then turned her head for good measure. She clung to the edge of the tub with a death grip and held her breath. Charlie poked her a little with the tweezers as he lined up the sliver, but she managed to keep still. She snatched another breath, wishing he'd hurry up.

"Do you want to see?" he asked.

"No! It's better if I don't watch."

"I mean do you want to see the sliver before I throw it away? It's a big one."

Kennedy cracked an eye open. "You got it?"

Charlie kissed her nose. "All done, brave girl."

Kennedy inspected her foot. A small red spot around a tiny puncture mark was all that remained of her injury.

"I'll clean it for you, then we can find something to do to keep you off your feet, hmm?" Charlie said.

Kennedy drew an easy breath for the first time since she'd limped into the bathroom. She hated getting hurt, no matter how mildly. She hated being reminded that she was less than invincible, that she was fallible on some level.

Charlie covered the narrow mouth of a glass bottle with a cotton ball, then flipped the bottle upside down to soak the white fluff.

"You don't trust tap water?" Kennedy asked.

"This isn't water. It's witch hazel. It'll make you feel better."

"Whoa, hang on. What-hazel? I've never heard of that stuff. I'm not sure I want you rubbing into an open wound."

"It's fine. People have been using it for centuries. It's sterile, I've seen how the family makes it."

"It's home-made? Not even made in a nice, sanitary factory? No, thanks."

"I don't have any of the factory-made antiseptic. Do you have any idea how many chemicals they put in that stuff?" Charlie asked.

"I like chemicals. Nice inert, synthetic chemicals that are guaranteed hostile to nasty bacteria." Kennedy snatched the bandage from where Charlie had set it on the edge of the tub and applied it to her foot. "I'm glad to see you're not opposed to plastic bandages. Otherwise I might have been going home with my foot tied up with an old rag."

Kennedy could hear the antagonism creeping into her voice, but couldn't seem to stop herself. She was willing to put up with a lot of his weird hippie stuff, but not when it came to what she put on her body. Why couldn't he just keep normal first-aid supplies in his bathroom?

"You're going home?" he asked quietly, sounding somehow both hurt and relieved.

That wasn't what she had meant, but if he was that offended by her not letting him use home-made witch juice on her injury, maybe they were farther apart than she'd come to think. He'd taken her to a drum circle today, for heaven's sake! What was wrong with dinner and a movie for a night out with the person you were dating?

Kennedy stood up. "There's a huge pile of marking I was supposed to get done before Monday. I should go home and try to finish it."

"If it needs done, it needs done," Charlie said.

"Okay, then."

Kennedy walked into the kitchen and put her socks and shoes back on. She said her goodbyes to Charlie, who was polite but cool, though he kissed her on the cheek when she left.

It was only when she walked out onto the street that she remembered Charlie had picked her up at home. Standing at a bus stop a couple blocks from Charlie's shop, Kennedy stood there wondering how things had gone from good to bad this quickly. Today had been full of so many ups and downs, she was disoriented and uncomfortable as though she'd been riding in a rear-facing seat on a bumpy bus ride.

Seeing Charlie at her door was an up, as it always was. Not knowing where he wanted to take her was a down, as was arriving at a high school. The drum circle started as a down, but turned into an up as she got into it, she reluctantly admitted to herself. The car ride back was another up, and sex against the wall in the stockroom had taken her up so far, so fast, she'd nearly passed out from the acceleration effects. Not being allowed to nap in his lap was a minor down, as was getting the sliver.

If she'd only just ignored the stabbing little pain of the sliver, she could have been back in Charlie's apartment right now finding out her resistance to the g-force of a second mind-blowing romp in the sack. But no, she'd put her foot down (so to speak) and refused his home-grown medicine, and somehow hurt his feelings.

The bus arrived and Kennedy settled into an empty seat near the back. Was his ego tied up in her using his stuff, going along with his ways? She'd certainly done a lot of things that she never would have though herself capable of doing before meeting Charlie. It might not be good for her to be giving away so much of herself to someone that she'd know for such a relatively short period of time. She really was getting behind on her TA work, as well as her own schoolwork. Perhaps seeing a bit less of each other wouldn't be a bad thing for a while. She was getting far too attached to someone who was her complete opposite in nearly every way.